Children's Literature Studies
Year:2016 | Volume:6 | Issue:2 (12)|Papers Count:7

This study aims to deductively identify and track down different types of otherness and their attributes as represented in Iranian children' s and young adults' literature. To do so, a sample of twenty seven stories was firstly studied through a deductive qualitative content analysis so as to decide what kinds of otherness exist in Iranian children's and young adults' literature. Secondly, the text of each story was analyzed using a reflective content analysis method, with a descriptive-interpretative approach in order to show how those characters identified as other are represented in the stories. The results reveal that those characters regarded as other show a low profile in Iranian children's and young adults' literature and that the voice of others is not loud enough. Along with the limited presence, the actions of other characters are also limited due to the fact that they belong to marginalized groups, with a low or no degree of power. Although self/other relationship in most of stories is essentially based on conflict, there are some representations of self/other relationship that imply interaction, acceptance, empathy and friendship.

Dioscurism or divine and sacred twins as an element of almost all ritual and myths of different nations exists in one form or the other. Although holy twins with their specific features are not present in Iranian great epic-Shahnameh, they are narrated in ancient Iranian oral tales. In this paper, the tale of "wise brother and Crazy brother" is discussed from this viewpoint. In this tale the twins' relationship with cows and horses, their passage from agricultural life to urban life and sacrifice of one twin for the sake of the other as well as burying one in order to put the foundation for a building are noticed. The crazy one seems to have an opposite character but the same character provides success for the wise brother.

Two elements of character and accident are studied in this paper to see if value added characteristics are a result of characterization or if they are dependent upon events. Eight variables of dynamic characters, sadness, happiness, fear, anxiety, hope, despair, patience, and intolerance were selected and studied using content analysis. The statistical analysis showed that anxiety had the highest prevalence-18 times repeated-while despair had the lowest frequency of 4 times. The high and low number of changes along with events and happenings by characters presents negative or positive behaviors on the part of the characters. Thus characters in this story overwhelm events adding positive or negative values. Also the writer's ideological views as well as political and social changes of his time have directly affected the outcome.

Farhad Hasanzadeh, borne in 1962, is well-known children's literature writer and satirist. Among his best humorous books are Classmate's Wall Newspaper on the Ceiling and Cursed Jokes. In these books, which are parodies of adult's serious newspapers, the children and teenage characters as the paper staff, target the day to day problems of the children and teenagers in the society satirically. The different and childlike view points of the characters of the books make them very interesting. Due to their press-based characteristics, the emphasis is more on verbal irony but there are also some irony situation. It is argued that one of the reasons for Hasanzadeh's outstanding use of irony is that he implements of a wide range of satirical technics which are appropriate for the verbal capacity and age related qualities of the children and teenagers. These techniques can be divided into 3 categories of ' joke, parody and other techniques. The objective of the present article is to categorize and analyze these technics through a descriptive- analytic approach in order to study how influential they are in Hasanzadeh's success in his books.

Belief structure i s basis of thoughts and individual social actions in human beings. In this Elements such as courage, power, wealth, spirituality, and success each have a place in such a structure to mold and strengthen the type of personality of each individual. In addition to entertainment aspect of folk tales of each nation, they contain and promote such beliefs indirectly. Nowadays economical, psychological and social success and self-actualization, breakthrough and self-esteem are promoted through tales and stories. In this study based on Arene\Thompson classification, the beliefs were extracted from 153 Iranian folk tales and the final results has been evaluated based on psychological theories. The results show some Iranian folk tales have not paid much attention to personality development and in some other cases had been introducing incorrect patterns.

This paper tries to evaluate the impact of symbolic verse tales on religious development of children, especially the concept of theology in four verse stories. To achieve this objective, descriptive-analytical approach is used. A study of the symbols indicates that these tales show the abstract and unknown concept of child's peace ensuing from the connection to God in three phase: separation and loneliness, trying to come back and the tranquility of return. This kind of story-telling is in line with results of cognitive studies on how children visualize God as well as with their cognitive development strengthening the spirit of inquiry in children which itself is an important aspect of the debate in critical thinking in raising children.

The present paper studies the manifestations of decentration devices in Persian folktale s. As Piaget asserts decentration is a central attribute of children's mind and as Khosronejad has suggested, decentration is manifested through some devices in children's literature. This study is intended to make a new contribution to the independency of children's literature. Following the theory of innocence and experience, Enjavi Shirazi's Folktales are studied through qualitative deductive content analysis. The findings revealed that overstating and happy ending were the devices that proved to be present in all of the folktales., Close up and Wide shot, however, had no manifestation in the studied samples. The findings also revealed 13 new manifestations of decentration: A single scene from two different perspectives, simultaneous scenes, Superficial glance and profound, Chain of events, Burst of Inversions, The Displacement of Hero, Being episodic, Surprisal, Dialogue/Discussion, Labeling, Frame tale, Cumulative tales, Metamorphosis.